I have a shirt from graphic artist Rob Sheridan’s collection that was given to me at Christmas.

Now I’m rethinking the social sphere and maybe the shirt is not the joke I think it was intended to be.

Y’all, there was a brawl at a Pennsylvania Golden Corral. There were dozens of people throwing high chairs at each other because the Corral ran out of steak.  I am not kidding you. There’s even videos of it.

On the video there’s some poor guy walking around saying, “I just wanted some steak.”

Now I want to be honest here. I am not anti-fighting. There are some things worth fighting over. I came real close to punching a guy for trashing talking my Momma. If Mitch McConnell ever knocks on my door, I am going to open the door and punch that sumbitch right on the nose and tell him to get off my property. I believe in the theory of he-had-it-coming.

I looked up Bensalem Pennsylvania and found it has a population of 60,000. I can assure you that whatever Golden Corral was serving was not steak. There’s a fairly high probability that it was some sort of meat, but steak, no.

On the other hand, Golden Corral might be high-falutin’ in Bensalem. The only competition in its class would be Pizza Hut and Mabel’s Pea Soup and More Cafe.

But I’m not sure I want to be social around people who throw rowdy fits in a crowded place over something I wouldn’t eat in the first place.  Lurleen respectfully disagrees with me. “Honey, the article says nobody got hurt. If you are throwing furniture in a crowded restaurant and nobody gets hurt, you are not fighting — you’re just horsing around.”

The sordid details of TFG’s extreme efforts to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020 are finally surfacing.  TFG tried to get the US military, the DOJ, and Homeland Security to seize the voting machines in states he lost so he could steal the presidency away from millions and millions of voters who chose the other guy.  I even remember the rumors that were floating around that the US military was seizing machines, as far fetched as that sounded pre-January 6. Today, it’s perfectly plausible, because that’s EXACTLY what TFG was actually trying to do.  He’s even publicly admitted it.

Even today, all of these facts are not only shocking, they are enraging.  It REALLY pisses me off that people in the government KNEW what he was doing.  A LOT of people knew what he was doing.  Many people in these agencies were aware of TFG’s efforts to steal the election; more important, those in high ranking political and non-political offices knew, including the Joint Chiefs, Attorney(s) General, Secretary of Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, and hundreds of staffers in these agencies.  Fortunately for us our brittle system held this time, but that’s unlikely the next time it happens (and it will) with the changes Republicans have rammed through the state legislatures over the last year to make it easier to overturn election results they don’t like.

What I want to know, and I demand this answer, is where in the hell have these hundreds of people been in the last year?  Because he was so dangerous, I understand the cone of silence until we ousted TFG from the WH, but why the silence since then?  Now he’s just a crazy old fat man sitting on his gold plated toilet screaming at his television. It’s been over a year since he committed serious crimes on both state and federal levels, and NO ONE has come forward with the full story.  Why in the hell isn’t the FBI perp walking him right now?  This son of a bitch almost succeeded in overturning a national election, aided by many, many, co-conspirators.  Why aren’t THOSE people being perp walked?

Hey, Merrick Garland, DO YOUR DAMN JOB.  No more eggshell walking – go after this guy and everyone who either aided him or even looked the other way.  If there is such a thing as accessory to sedition, THIS IS IT.

Get to work.

Yesterday was the first day Black History Month. These collection of news stories were bound to happen, but it is still amazing nonetheless. The first one is one you all know well. The backlash against the 1619 Project and so-called critical race theory has been ongoing. In the midst of all that chaos, numerous states have chosen to limit what teachers can teach their students during this month. For instance, we can talk about Jackie Robinson, but we can’t talk about why there was a color barrier in the first place. We can talk about Martin Luther King Jr, but we can’t delve too deeply.

The end result is that multiple generations of Americans believe MLK had a dream. They’ll quote the dream and even misquote it in order to pretend that he would support policies that further subjugate people. Meanwhile, we have students that think he freed the slaves, was the first black president, and a precious few seem to think he was related to Martin Luther.

It’s in this backdrop that the second news story makes even more sense. Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores started a class action lawsuit against the NFL charging systemic racism and racist practices. While it certainly wasn’t the most shocking revelation, the fact that Bill Belichek accidentally texted him and congratulated him for getting the Giants job (thinking he was Brian Daboll) before he interviewed. His interview was simply to comply with the Rooney Rule that mandates at least two interviews with minority candidates.

A league that has a 70 percent African American player population has one black head coach for 32 teams. There are three minority coaches combined amongst those 32. That’s impossible to defend. I’m sure teams like the Giants, Dolphins, and Broncos (who were specifically named in the suit) can somehow defend their hires and their decisions. I’m sure most teams can. That’s the difference between systemic racism and overt racism.

Hardly anyone comes right out and says it anymore. We are all too smart and too sophisticated for that. However, when the vast majority of the owners are white then they will hire white executives most of the time. Those executives will hire people that they know and have worked with. They turn out to be white most of the time. Head coaches hire assistants they’ve worked with before and they turn out to be white most of the time. I think everyone knows the score.

Ultimately, we don’t grow if we don’t force ourselves to acknowledge some painful truths. We can argue about intention until we are blue in the face. We can assert that we don’t hate anyone because of their race, ethnicity, country of origin, or religion. We can argue vehemently that we aren’t racist and even believe it down to our core.

Many of us can do so with a straight face. Yet, it’s hard to look around and not see the results of a society that has been systematically unfair for decades. Now, many of us are barred from pointing that out. We don’t want kids to feel bad. There’s a fine line between assigning blame in the present day or simply being aware that a discrepancy exists. We didn’t cause the discrepancy, but if we don’t acknowledge it we can’t move on. Then, it will be our fault.

The bad news starts here.

And then it gets worse.

But there is good news: Ted Cruz can plan his trip to Cancun ahead of time and not get caught sneaking out of town.

So it’s probably all worth it.

At some point when we were children we were told that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words would never hurt us. It’s a nice sentiment for toddlers and young children, but anyone that has ever had an argument with a friend, loved one, or even a casual acquaintance knows this to be untrue.

We’ve seen any number of monikers for the ex-president as well. People have found all kinds of creative names and acronyms to avoid saying his name. They do this because he sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. He is just a gigantic lump of vanity or the human form of a black hole. Unfortunately, these are only words too.

At a recent event, he admitted out loud that Joe Biden won the election and he was trying to overturn the election. However, I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way. He will continue to assert that he won while uttering phrases like this that showed that he lost.

Words matter. How we address our friends, neighbors, family members, and those we work with matters. How we speak to people matters. This is why we pay so much attention to our politicians in the first place. We pay attention to not only what they say but how they say it. When those words and the deeds that follow match up then we know we are onto something. On a similar timeline, the ex-president promised to pardon insurrectionists should he be reelected in 2024. Such talk could be seen as idle chat, but it is important to look at his history of pardons while he was in the White House.

Certainly, it wasn’t everyone on the list. Yet, when you look at a alarmingly large number of folks pardoned or commuted you see a pattern. It is a pattern of someone that used the oval office as somewhat of a criminal enterprise. It could credibly be said that no one gets poorer going to Washington. Still, no one has profited from the presidency quite like the last occupant.

In the face of these words, the mantra from the right has been eerily consistent. He didn’t mean it like that. He was just joking. You libs are taking him way too literally. He’s not a politician, so he’s not an artful speaker. He just tells it like it is. Suddenly you look up and they’ve tied themselves in knots trying to explain off something that can’t be excused.

What the former guy knows is that nothing serious is ever going to happen to him. People will talk and there will be investigations and they will find more than enough evidence to charge him, but somehow that won’t happen. It won’t happen because he breaks the law in plain sight. He tells you he’s going to do it. He tells you he’s done it. Surely no criminal would do such a thing.

He also is banking on an over 200 year tradition in this country. Underlings and henchmen go to jail. The principals never do. We don’t throw our political opponents in jail. The whole country would descend into chaos if we did. Chaos is just another word after all. Still, it is a pretty good descriptor of what is going on right now.